Animaniacs of the Caribbean: At World's End
by avesjohn
Summary: Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Pirates. Told in the revolutionary new "prose" format. Ridiculously experimental, and replete with celebrity cameos.
1. The First Chapter

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

By which I mean, it was a time when the third installments of profitable movie franchises were all coming out around the same time, making huge sums of money despite disappointing audiences and critics alike. _Spider-Man 3_, with its bloated plot and Eric Foreman as the villain, was the first sign of trouble. This was followed shortly thereafter by _Shrek the Third_, a film with an awkward title resulting from the previous "Shrek 3-D" attraction at Universal Studios that, like the movie itself and cast member Justin Timberlake's music, most of the more intelligent crowd did their best to avoid.

And then there's _this_ story.

Because you're reading it, I won't spoil how it goes for you, suffice to say, don't say the previous examples didn't give you fair warning.

The same can be said to the _terrorists_, who were about to endure severe punishment on a lovely island in the Caribbean whilst surrounded by beautiful people and gorgeous weather. Wait, what.

That's right. By _illegally_ downloading music and movies for free these filthy, lowly pirates were directly funding the cause of _terrorism_. Wait, what.

Punishment…in the _Caribbean_? Free media…that funds _terrorism_? Quality storytelling…in the _third_ movie? Yes, folks, we're in the right place.

The East India Trading Company flag, white with a black triad of T's separating "E", "I", and "Co." (the latter there because a mere "C" could mean anything), was blowing in the wind, along with the answer, my friend.

Badly-dressed, poorly hygienic people were being led to the gallows several at a time by the comparatively much better-clothed officers of the aforementioned company, who also wore funny hats and white wigs because that's what people in the seventeenth century did, and also Sarah McLachlan was there for some reason. As the unfortunate sympathy ploys had nooses placed around their necks and were killed en masse a minute later by an imposing executioner straight out of the cover of _A Night In Terror Tower_, one EITC officer read, for expository convenience, the crimes these obviously innocent people were being executed for and the reasons to hate the man in charge.

"In order to effect a timely halt to deteriorating conditions, and to ensure the common good, a state of emergency is declared for these territories, by decree of Lord Cutler Beckett, duly appointed representative of His Majesty the King." Switch a few names around, and look: you can create your very own Patriot Act! "By decree, according to martial law, the following statutes are suspended: right to online privacy, suspended." _Death!_ "Right to DRM-free media, suspended." _Death!_ "Right to visit Sweden, suspended." _Death!_ "Right to skip through our commercials on DVDs, suspended." _Death!_ "All persons convicted of piracy, or aiding a person convicted of piracy, or associating with a person convicted of piracy, shall be sentenced to hang by the neck until dead." Obvious loophole missed by the legislature: those who enforce legal action against said pirates are technically associating with the pirates themselves, meaning they, too, would have to be hanged. The lawyers would have noticed this technicality, but since this corporation took its cues from Shakespeare, there were no longer any lawyers to speak of. The only law now was the hangman, and Chuck Norris.

A young child was then brought up to the gallows. Staring up at the noose above him, he could see why they might react this way to his downloading of that "…Baby One More Time" mp3, but even with this in mind it still seemed a tad extreme.

After tying up the others for this round of victims, the executioner noticed the boy's pint size, and in order to facilitate the dying process and get his job done quicker so he could go home and have that steak the wife promised for tonight after a cold beer on the couch with the game on, he grabbed a nearby barrel (no doubt the former home of rum) and forced the boy onto it. Only then could the noose be properly placed around the child's neck.

Ignoring his imminent death, the boy, no older than twelve years (which was practically middle age back then), decided to try and lighten the mood as best he could for himself and his fellow sympathy ploys by—what else—singing! Slowly, he began, "She was more like a beauty queen, from a movie scene…I said don't mind but what do you mean I am the one…."

The neighboring black man continued the verse while at the same time giving the filmmakers proof to others that they weren't biased towards white actors because, look, we gave this minority a speaking role: "Who will dance on the floor in the round."

Apparently this was inspiring enough to get _everybody_ singing, in spite of the irony that a child was singing a song made famous by an alleged child molester. Those still waiting in line to be executed, and even a few of the dead (who must have confused this song for another by that same artist), joined in the chorus. Yes, they knew they had limited time, like a clothing sale at JCPenney, and they _had_ to take advantage of it, so they skipped through the second verse and bridge and went straight to the chorus. "Billie Jean is not my lover. She's just a girl who claims that I am the one."

One of the Trading Company's officers ran to his boss, the short, portly gray-haired man sitting idly by at a table, his back to the crowd and his face implying that he was absorbed in deep thought, some of which was undoubtedly cosmic questioning about his poor genes. "Lord Beckett," the officer said to the mastermind of this fiendish Plotz, "they've started to sing, sir."

"Finally," Beckett replied smugly, slamming his coin-beholding hand down onto the table. In a small taste of forthcoming karma, he received a slight splinter from the rough wood of the furniture, but he did his best to hold back the tear it caused.

"But the kid is not my son," the crowd echoed.

The executioner briefly considered the higher philosophical significance of what he was about to do—murdering by royalty-ordered decree an innocent child—but in the end decided the paycheck was more important in the long run, and with that the boy's feet dropped. Then a coin fell, and the title of this story appeared onscreen. Unfortunately for those not getting paychecks out of it, the curtain did not fall here.

And yet, I keep on writing.


	2. The Second Chapter

The next thing you know, we're in a land full of yellow people. No, not Springfield; Singapore. Ah, nothing like a little racism to spice up a humorless story. (The views expressed in the interviews and commentary are solely those of the individuals providing them, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Walt Disney Company or its affiliates.)

Anyway, oaring down the river in a stereotypically Oriental outfit, complete with a redneck straw hat adorned with a fashionable yellow daisy, we follow our female lead, Elizabeth Swann, a vaguely doglike black creature with a white face that was either some kind of satire of blackface or, more likely, something not worth overanalyzing because she's a cartoon and such a look simply makes her easier to draw and identify with. Regardless, her semi-canine features give me adequate reason to refer to her as a "bitch" whenever it seems necessary, and happy day, it's going to become very necessary.

Elizabeth is singing "Billie Jean", and boy, did writing this suddenly become very awkward and uncomfortable. Hi there, it's the summer of 2009, and the King of Pop has just died. That's sad and all, but if you think I'm going to let this recent tragedy destroy my running gag, you've got another thing coming.

"Billie Jean is not my lover," she hummed softly, attracting the ire of royalty-demanding record executives everywhere who don't know free advertising when they see it. "She's just a girl who claims that I am the one…." She reached the shore, and set her paddle down and walked up onto the short boardwalk.

"But the kid is not my son," a Singaporean man suddenly interrupted her, but without disrupting the flow, which was nice. "A dangerous song to be singing, for anyone ignorant of peoples' feelings." He drew a blade and threatened the insignificant Dot of a girl with it. "Particularly a woman, particularly a woman alone."

Enter an obese, dim-witted policeman, I mean, pirate, with a scraggly beard and a funny hat all his own, who threw a butterfly net over the head of the guy, whose name is Tai Huang. "Whats makeses youse think she's aloneses?"

"You protect her?" Tai gasped. Implied intentions to rape makes such good comedy, doesn't it, Disney?

Elizabeth then hit Tai in the head with a wooden mallet. "And what makes you think I need protecting, silly?" she giggled. Ah, she's cute for a bitch.

"Yourse master'ses expectin's us," the surprise ending of the second movie explained for expository purposes. "An unexpected deathses woulds cast a slight pallses on ours meetin'ses." If you're having trouble understanding what he's saying, it's because he's not speaking in an Asian tongue and that dictionary you bought to help translate this is useless.

As the Asians led Elizabeth and Barbossa through their peninsular tip of a home to meet their boss, under the boardwalk at the other end of town swam what looked like turtles, but weren't because that would be boring, no matter how much you might like them. But then the "shells" arose, revealing two gene-spliced laboratory mice, a childish brown squirrel, an older gray squirrel with a purse and green hat, a mime, and a bearded man, all breathing through snorkels fashioned out of bamboo stalks. The group made their way underneath a sewer grating, and watched as three common city pigeons, one nasty and gray (Pesto), one purple and naïve (Squit), and the last green and Robert De Niro-y (Bobby), flew overhead, singing "Steady As She Goes" by the Raconteurs with more talent than you might expect. Providing musical accompaniment was a capuchin monkey, Jack (White?), and wheeling a cart idly by was a slender gray housecat with a bandage over her tail and wait a minute how can a cat wheel a cart?

Gibbs, the bearded man and second mate to our absent-for-the-first-thirty-minutes main character, got his animal friends to help him begin sawing at the metal grating. This help, of course, was only possible in the first place because these particular animal friends had opposable thumbs, because they were cartoon characters in the roles of human actors, you see. "All right," Gibbs said, even though they hadn't accomplished anything yet.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth and Barbossa were talking amongst themselves about the man the former was about to meet for the very first time. "Have you heard anything from Will?" Yeah, bitch, talk about your fiancé's secret operation out loud, why don't you?

"I trustes young Turnerses to acquireses the chartses, ands youses to rememberses your placeses in the precenses of Captainses Sao Fengses," the verbally challenged villain of the first movie answered.

"Is he that terrifying?"

"He's muchses likes myselfses, buts absentses my merciful natureses and senses ofs fair playses." _Sigh_.

Meanwhile, the grating had been successfully cut through, and Gibbs was quick to point this out with his voice, because in this darkness, hand signals wouldn't be nearly as effective. He urged his shipmates to "make ready."

Meanwhile again, the Singaporeans had finished their journey from wherever they'd started to the entrance to Sao Feng's hideout. A slit in the wooden door opened, and to a pair of eyes, Tai Huang said "_Hoi_," and with that kind of multicultural research being integrated into the script so thoroughly, it's a wonder many of these Asian scenes were cut and censored away like some kind of…well, everything in China.

Anyway, Elizabeth, Barbossa, and the unimportant people around them entered Sao Feng's hideout, and even though this story takes place in the seventeenth century, the story is genuinely 2007, and in the post-9/11 world, that means even the bad guys get their own Department of Homeland Security goons to annoy the hell out of subordinate terrorist (or in this case, pirate) amateurs. Elizabeth and Barbossa handed Tai Huang their weapons (guns and swords), but just as Elizabeth was about to walk past Tai to meet Sao Feng, the guard put up a hand to stop her. "You think because she is a woman we would not suspect her of treachery?" he asked Barbossa.

"Noses," Barbossa said. He had a point: the nose _does_ know. But that's probably not what he meant.

"Remove, please," Tai said.

With that, Elizabeth then went Rambo on their ass. No, I'm kidding—she merely removed her hat, outer coat, and boot to reveal a plethora of comically placed weaponry—but wouldn't this story be so much more exciting if she actually _did_ waste some communist-sympathizing Vietcong? Just about the only thing more fun than killing commies is killing Nazis, as Brad Pitt will surely soon prove.

"Remove, please," Tai said perversely.

"Boys, go fig," Elizabeth said.

Because this movie is PG-13, and because Dot from Animaniacs is technically a minor, and because the curious can already see Keira Knightley topless in several movies, the next thing we see is not girl parts but the decidedly unsexy Sao Feng at his office of sorts. Sao Feng was a great big jade green hippopotamus enjoying a steam bath with his equally unsexy purple hippo of a partner. "Captain Barbossa," he said, making an unsexy, pudgy-fingered pass at his mate's obese thigh. The Spanish accent was the only sexy thing about this man, a la Antonio Banderas. Women brought to nudity by the voice alone were just as quickly transported, almost by forces of nature, back into their clothes upon seeing his not-so-hip body. "Welcome to Singapore." He turned to his wife and demanded, "More steam."

The wife, nameless until I say so otherwise, nodded and pulled down an overhanging cord, which caused "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" by Steam (as promised) to begin playing in the background. Old folks reading this story are going, "I remember that song! Billy, hand Grandpa his dentures."

Nearby, the taller of the two gene-spliced mice was approaching a tremendous creature that made the average American look like, well, somebody not lounging in front of the TV wondering who the next national Idol will be while remaining ignorant of the corrupt bureaucracies in their lives and steadily growing more and more plump as their years progress ("Billy, give Grandpa his dentures, damn it!"). Except this creature wasn't a grossly overweight hippo like his superiors, but a grossly overweight Asian man.

"None of that," Gibbs said, easily pulling Ragetti away because of the latter's tiny murine stature. "If things don't go the way we want them, we're the only chance they've got!" And now the audience knows.

"I understand you have a request to make of me," Sao Feng said.

"Mores of a proposalses to puts to yeses," Barbossa replied. That proposal was not to fake an engagement so as to avoid deportation back to Canada, which makes no sense, because Ryan Reynolds is Canadian, not Sandra Bullock, who, by the way, was also in attendance at this meeting for some reason. "I haveses a ventureses underwayses and happens to findses myselfs in needses of a shipses ands a crewses."

"This is an odd coincidence," Sao Feng said, attempting to scratch the back of his head and failing.

"Because you happen to have a ship and a crew you don't need?" Elizabeth said.

Sandra Bullock coughed in the background to help a sister out. It didn't work.

"No," Sao Feng said. "Because, earlier this day, not far from here, a thief broke into my most revered uncle's temple, did a bad-ass dance to avoid the high-tech laser security, and single-handedly saved the sequel from sucking despite an amazing, talented ensemble cast." I could give you Ocean's twelve reasons why Sao Feng was disappointed with that sequel, but by the time I finish, you'd be an old geezer ("Billy, if you don't give Grandpa his dentures _right now_, I swear I'm getting the rifle!") and would likely be suffering from Alzheimer's and will have forgotten the past eleven reasons as soon as I finally finish explaining the twelfth one. "Anyway," Sao Feng continued, "he tried to make off with these." He picked up a series of rolled-up scrolls sitting beside him on the rim of the bath, and without unfolding them, showed them off to Elizabeth and Barbossa. "The navigational charts." And now the audience knows. "The route to the farthest gate." If said gate is anything like _Heaven's Gate_, the trip probably isn't worth it. "Wouldn't it be amazing if this venture of yours took you to the world beyond this one?" Wait, so you're saying there are journeys beyond this world that _aren't_ amazing?

"Its woulds strains credulities at thats," Barbossa said. You said it, man. I mean, it's gibberish, but you said it.

Sao Feng snapped his fingers, which were wrinkled like a senior citizen ("_I've got the gun now! You can run, Billy, but you can't hide!_"), and the subordinate minorities (redundant?) pulled a man-dog, similar to Elizabeth with his black body and white face and gloves, dressed in period clothing except for the red baseball cap atop his head and the same-colored tongue sticking out of his mouth, out from another, smaller tubful of hot water at the other corner of the room. "This is the thief," Sao Feng said, pointing an accusing finger at the Wakko who'd been foolish enough to try and skirt customs. "Is his face familiar to you?"

At this query, Elizabeth and Barbossa both shook their heads, forgetting that in some cultures that actually means, "yes." It didn't mean that here, but it was still a bad response, because, if you'll pardon the bad paragraph break to follow:

"Then I guess he has no further need for it," Sao Feng said, reaching into the tub to pull out a gigantic, mighty sharp-looking sword, oddly enough the same color as his body, whose bottom handle was hidden underneath the steaming water along with the bottom half of his unsexy body, and _whoa_, this is a Disney movie, _come on! _"Wow, this is heavier than I remember." Thematically, yeah, it's starting to head in that direction. Yikes. "Can a brother get a hand?" Consider for a moment that this is an elderly Asian hippo with a sexy Latino dialect attempting to talk like a cool urban youth.

"I'll help," Elizabeth said as she walked up to help the fat man. She daringly put her hand into the boiling water, drawing the ire of the wife. "Ow," she said understatedly as he hands began burning. "This is going to be a touch job. What are you going to do to him, anyway?"

"I'm going to tear him into a million tiny pieces," Sao Feng replied, after which Elizabeth and the reader realized what the former was grabbing inside that tub and screamed in response. "_A-ha!_" True to his exclamation, the hippo then took on Elizabeth and Barbossa as they had tried to take on him. "So, you come into my city, and betray my hospitality!"

"Saos Fengs, I assures youse, I hads noses ideas…" Barbossa stuttered, trying to sound innocent, but that was hard to do when no one had any idea what he was saying, except for the part about them somehow understanding everything he says.

"_That he would get caught?!_" Sao Feng said, proving my point. He rose out of the tub, covered up his monstrous I won't say it with, of all things, a hand towel, and walked over to Elizabeth and Barbossa. "You intend to attempt a voyage to Davy Jones' locker! When I cannot help but wonder, why?" Why, to make money, of course. Need I remind you that this is the third movie in a franchise?

Barbossa tossed a piece of eight into Sao Feng's gigantic hand, where it was nearly crushed. "The songs hases beens sungses," he said. ("And it remains the same," Elizabeth remarked. I like Led Zeppelin, too (and _Led Zeppelin II_), but this isn't the time and place, bitch.) "The timeses is upons uses." ("And it has come today," Elizabeth added, and you could almost hear The Chambers Brothers music playing in the background if only we'd gotten the rights to use it here.) "Wes musts convenes the Brethrens Courtses. As ones of the nines pirates lordses youse musts honors the calluses." (Why are their _nine_ pieces of _eight_? And why can't Elizabeth make _that_ kind of observation? That bitch.)

"More steam," Sao Feng ordered his wife, and even as the "na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye"-s got louder, he continued to demand, "_More steam!_"

Down below, our childish brown squirrel friend hit our grossly overweight Asian man (not our friend, hence the action to follow) in the head with a shovel. You might think, with those buck teeth of his, that "shovel" was a descriptive metaphor for his incisors, but that would mean Marty (the squirrelly subject of this sentence and paragraph) would have to give a forehead hickey to the wannabe-American. And while I'm all for progressive politics, we all know that that kind of relationship never works out in the end, and if you need a reference, I suggest you look up a certain incident involving a squirrel that went berserk in the First Self-Righteous Church in the sleepy little town of Pascagoula, Mississippi. Man and Skippy (Squirrel) were never meant to be, but man and Skippy (peanut butter), you bet.

Sao Feng continued: "There's a price on our heads, it is true." Insert your own bit about this being an analogy for the acting salary of these salacious actors (except Flavio and Marita). "Since it seems the only way a pirate can turn a profit anymore is by betraying other pirates…" Well, considering the very idea of piracy is to _not_ make a profit, yeah, that sounds about right. Sao Feng is probably glad he downloaded that copy of the Hannah Montana soundtrack before the Pirate Bay turned on him the way many a young woman did, with the same lack of reciprocation.

"It's Elizabeth!" Ragetti, the more slender of our two gene-spliced laboratory mice, whispered as he looked up poor Elizabeth's skirt, at the organs that confirmed that she was, indeed, a bitch. Arguably, anyway; it's not like a catchy song is going to change the fact that we haven't a clue what she or either of her compatriots are, except, of course, _cute_.

"Wait for the signal," Gibbs replied.

Up above, weapons were being taken out of their rolling containers in preparation for some kind of fight sequence. (Don't worry, they read the script, they know what they're doing, although the why is a tad iffy at this point.)

"The firsts Brethrens Courtses gaves us ruleses of the seases," Barbossa said, destroying in one fell swoop not just the historical credibility of the story, but also the moral one. And, of course the Brethren Court gave the rulesses of the seases to pirates, the Brethren Court _is_ pirates. "That rule has been challenged by Lord Cutler Beckett." _Oh no! The law is doing their job! Whoever will stop them?_

These guys.

Yeah.

LOL.

_Crap._

"Against the East India Trading Company, what value is the Brethren Court?" Sao Feng asked. Some dude in the audience is going, "He's right. What's the use?" "What can any of us do?" "What _can_ they do?" "Shut up, Steve."

Stepping forward because she's a _tough_ girl, Elizabeth growled cutely to Sao Feng's face, "You can fight!" For your right…to _piiiiiirate!_ One of Sao Feng's guards grabbed Elizabeth's shoulder to pull her away from the big boss man, only to have his minority status and her bitchiness simultaneously reinforced when she threw said hand off of her ("Get off me!") and then talked down to Sao Feng by needlessly reminding him of who he was ("You are Sao Feng, the Pirate Lord of Singapore!").

Shortly after Elizabeth stepped forward but before she bitched again, Ragetti called Pintel over to have a look up her skirt through the wooden floorboards (I won't make a wood joke here, it's way too hard). Alas, Elizabeth was replaced in her place by the minority who would soon grab her shoulder and later go home crying, feeling inadequate, because he got cut down to size at work today by some stray bullets and is now too severely injured to ever live a full life but not injured enough to die from his wounds and escape his pain. Did I mention that he'd find his wife making love to another man when he opens that door? Anyway, the unsanitary pubes of this guy soon to have a very bad day were what Pintel, the shorter, squatter-headed of the two gene-spliced laboratory mice and the Brain of the outfit, saw instead of vaguely doglike female genitalia. What sexual interest would two mice have in a sort-of-dog? None. Nothing. Nada. If you hate n-words (_racist_), zip. This unimportant moment only occurred because the script must be honored. Personally, I honor it daily on my toilet paper roll, but maybe you have different preferences.

"…Would you have that era come to an end on your watch?" Elizabeth snapped at Sao Feng. In response, he checked his watch. "What time is it?" she said, thankfully putting an all-too-brief stop her overacted lines as she glanced at the timekeeper. She gasped.

"Whats is its, Elizabeths?" Barbossa said.

"It's…" she said with a dramatic pause accompanied by Hans Zimmer's overrated musical brilliance, "…_Hammertime!_" "U Can't Touch This" by MC Hammer replaced Steam on the airwaves, and appropriate dancing to the early nineties rap hit followed for the next several minutes until the song ended and the story needed to continue again. To Sao Feng, she said: "The most notorious pirates from around the world are uniting against our enemy, and yet you sit here, cowering in your bath water!"

"I'm out of the tub now," Sao Feng said, lifting his index finger. Circling her, he added, "Elizabeth Swann, there's more to you than meets the eye." So she's a transformer? "Isn't there? And the eye does not go wanting." My eyes didn't like _Revenge of the Fallen_ either. "But I cannot help but notice: you have failed to answer my question. What is it you seek in Davy Jones' locker?" Profit, duh.

"Jack Sparrow," William Turner said from his compromised, semi-tortured position above the hot water, his hands tied to a pole. The uttering of that name caused Sao Feng's wife to giggle, and the fact that Jack Sparrow—_Jack Sparrow!_—hit that is telling. So telling, in fact, that I will never be able to enjoy salami ever again. "He's one of the Pirate Lords." Well, gee, that's convenient.

Apparently having had some knowledge of his wife's extramarital affair, Sao Feng then bellowed to Will and the others that "The only reason I would want Jack Sparrow returned from the land of the dead…is so I can send him back myself!"

"Jacks Sparrows holds oneses of the nines pieceses of eights," Barbossa said. And again, I ask, why are there _nine_ pieces of _eight_? "Hes failedses to passes it alongs twos a successorses befores he dieds." Where there's a will, there's a way. And if there's not a will, there's always a Will in its place. But if that Will fails, then you're forgetting they were being deceptive assholes and completely unlikable main characters who don't deserve Sao Feng's help. "So wes musts goes and gets hims backs." Can they bring back the hard-earned cash of everyone in the audience while they're at it?

"So you admit, you have deceived me!" Sao Feng exclaimed. I noticed that a while ago, but then again, I'm the narrator. To his men, he demanded, "_Weapons!_" and they did what every Asian does when tests come their way: pass with flying colors. These guys didn't need calculators on _their_ math tests.

"_Weapons!_" Gibbs shouted to his shipmates underneath the floorboards, and they did as they were told, too, but without valedictorian recognition awaiting them in the not-too-distant future.

"Saos Fengs, I assureses youse, our intenses ares strictly honorables," Barbossa (could it _be_ anyone else?) said, and a second later Gibbs and friends tossed swords up through the crevices in the floorboards right into Elizabeth and Barbossa's hands. It's funny because honorable people typically don't get into swordfights with others.

"Drop your weapons!" Sao Feng said, grabbing a random Asian guy and putting a knife to his neck, though simply opening his mouth and showing off those terrifying hippopotamus teeth of his might have sufficed. "Or I kill the man!"

"Kills hims, he's nots our manses," Barbossa shrugged, looking at Elizabeth and Will, who were equally ambivalent rather than the decidedly more honorable "Hey, man, what gives?"

"If he's not with you," Will said, "and he's not with us…" Cue an ominous pause, scored by the wonderfully overused talent of Hans Zimmer. "…Who's he with?" Some dude in the audience is going, "Who _is_ he with?" "Shut up, Steve."


	3. The Theme Song Chapter

As it turned out, random Asian guy was with the enemy. Exactly one second later, a bunch of drones in blue shirts with muskets burst through the doors and began shooting at random at everyone in sight. The way things went, it was almost musical the way bullets tore into flesh, the way explosions scorched people to a crisp. It was so musical, in fact, that Richard Stone and Tom Ruegger would soon receive royalty checks in the mail for the piece that was to be performed.

The other main characters in this story soon appeared for their requisite cameos in the ensemble theme song. Jack Sparrow, the tallest and most yak-like of the main trio, showed up to join his offscreen siblings in the first chorus.

"_We're pyromaniacs!_" they began, jumping out of the nearest water tower. After a soldier's gun set off an explosion that they were choreographically blown away from, they continued, "_And we're blazing to the max!_" They hopped over to Elizabeth's father, a nervous Austrian man unqualified for clinical psychiatry with a ridiculous, anachronistic gray periwig over his balding head, and proceeded to set off a landmine beside him in the chair Beckett had confined him to while they sang: "_So just sit back and relax, you'll gasp till you collapse_," (he did), "_we're pyromaniacs!_"

"_Come join Jack and Will Turner_," those two sang as they walked casually through a lot to soon be stated by name, "_and the love interest Liz_," she interjected, and when a mad Beckett ran after them with a net, they explained, "_just for money we run around Disney like we're kids_." As Beckett caught them and aimed a firing squad at the captured pirates they only continued their musical number: "_They lock us in a contract, 'cause our franchise is big biz_," and the rifles were fired. Naturally, the unharmed Warners—I mean, pirates—then reappeared when the smoke cleared inside the hats of one of Beckett's soldiers, who was dumbfounded and really should have seen _Who Framed Roger Rabbit_ before signing onto a mix of live action and animation for his film debut. As they ran away to a more independent-minded (i.e., Oscar bait) studio, they reassured worried fans: "_But we break loose, and then vamoose, and our career's the shizz!_" And them, just in case you've forgotten: "_We're pyromaniacs!_"

And now, the character introductions…brought to you by Branimaniacs, part of this complete breakfast. "_Liz has boobs and Jack is J. Depp_," they said, thus securing ticket purchases in the theatre by horney teenagers of both genders, before resuming, "_Will thought his dad was dead, but he's on the Flying Dutchman," _and now the audience is caught up before being reminded again, "_we're pyromaniacs!_"

"_Meet Pintel and Ragetti,_" Jack, Will, and Liz resumed, showing off these little white mice and their little white egos, "_who want to have a bigger part!_" This pattern of "we'll show you who we're singing about and this is their gimmick" was the formula for the next several lines. You can make up your own mental imagery here; it's not like it'll make much more sense than what showed up on film. "_Cotton's pigeons flock together, Anamaria is an old fart! Murtogg works with Mullroy, and Tia Dalma's pushing a cart!_" Said cart turned out to be carrying explosives, making Jerry Bruckheimer and his production crew very happy, but killing several innocent soldiers just trying to get a paycheck. The overarching theme of the entire film was stated as thus in the penultimate line of the verse: "_Our writers flipped, we have no script, why bother to make it smart?_" By the way,"_We're pyromaniacs!_"

"_We have pay or play contracts_," they sang, a fact that was good for them but a cruel reminder that these hacks got away with this crap cinema while the rest of us get fired if we botch up that report. "_We're blazing to the max_," they echoed one of their first lines to let us know that this shining light of a song in a dark abyss of a film was soon to end. Furthermore, we learned that "_There's a detonator in our slacks_," which was either a bad euphemism or even worse judgment.

Now we were in the home stretch, with cue upon cue piling up to inform you to start leaving if you haven't done so yet. "_We're pyromany, totally insaney_," and then Jack soloed the next bit to state the obvious, "_turn off your brainy_," some poor advice before the final chorus of, "_PY-RO-MAN-I-ACS! Those are the facts!_"

Hey, you know what I just learned? Theme songs don't work so well in situations like these.

Regardless, this theme song worked a hell of a lot better than any actual storytelling ever would in this same place within the narrative, so rather than give you the boring details, I'll sum it up for you: Will makes a deal with Sao Feng to help in the freeing of his father, he returns to Elizabeth, Barbossa and the others with a ship and a crew (including Tai Huang), they escape while Tia Dalma spouts some vague bullshit warning about the evil in the sea, and also, Channing Tatum is there for some reason.


End file.
